This, the first of two volumes on Germany's World War II U-boats, traces their development from the early U-boats of the Kaiser's Navy, the prohibition on Germany having U-boats following the Armistice in 1918 and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles, the secret development of U-boats using a 'cover-firm' in Holland, culminating in the formation of the 1st U-boat Flotilla in 1935 with the modern Type II. The operational history section includes examples from the Classes Type VIIA, Type VIIB, VIID, VIIE and VIIF before concentrating on the mainstay of the U-boat arm, the Type VIIC. Comparisons are also made with the standard allied submarines, their strengths, weaknesses and U-boat tactics.

Divided by flotilla, this book offers an organizational breakdown of U-boat units. Each chapter includes a compact history of the U-boat flotilla's role and impact on the course of the conflict. Packed with colour profiles of major types of German U-boat, it is a guide for modellers, military historians and naval warfare enthusiasts alike.

The scourge of Allied shipping during World War II, the U-Boot Waffe was one of the most feared components of Hitler's war machine, yet the Kriegsmarine was the least political branch of the Third Reich. The sailors of the U-boat arm were courageous, highly skilled seamen, who fought a war in the toughest conditions: subject to immense tension, and forced to cope with the challenges of the Atlantic, life for a U-boat recruit was far from easy. This title explores the life of a typical U-boat crewman, from recruitment, through training and service conditions, to combat experience throughout the war. Illustrated with many previously unpublished images, this book offers a fresh insight into the experiences of the men in Dönitz's legendary 'wolf packs'.

As was the case in World War II, one of the greatest threats to Britain during World War I was the German U-boat menace. This book traces the development of the U-boat threat from the Brandtaucher, designed by Wilhelm Bauer, the father of the German submarine arm, in 1850, through to the commissioning of Germany's first U-boat to go into service, the U-1, in 1906. It then covers the main types of World War I U-boat, detailing the operational history of the U-boat service in depth, with a particular focus on the campaigns in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, as well as the slow build up of anti-submarine measures by the allies.

During the Second World War over 250 Allied warships from a dozen navies were sent to the bottom by German U-boats. This ground-breaking study provides a detailed analysis of every sinking for which source material survives from both the Allied and the German sides, resulting in detailed treatment of the fate of 110 vessels, with the remainder summarised in an extensive appendix. Uniquely, each entry is built around a specialist translation of the relevant segment of the war diary (log) of the U-boat in question, taken directly from the surviving originals – remarkably, this represents the first large-scale publication of the U-boat war diaries in any language. The book offers a wealth of new information, not only with respect to the circumstances of the sinkings from both the Allied and German perspectives, but also to the technical environment in which they lived as well as the fate of the crews. The entries include background details on the vessels concerned and the men involved, with a selection of rare and carefully chosen photos from archives and collections around the world. Each entry is itself a compelling narrative, but is backed with a list of sources consulted, including documents, published works and websites. A decade in the making, this is probably the most important book on the U-boat war to be published for many a year

‘The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril,’ wrote Winston Churchill in his history of the Second World War. ‘I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the Battle of Britain.” In reality, the Kriegsmarine had been woefully unprepared for the war into which it was thrown. The Command-in-Chief of submarines, Karl Dönitz, himself a verteran U-boat captain from the First World War, felt that he could bring Britain to its knees with a fleet of 300 U-Boats. But when war broke out, he had just twenty-four available for operational use. Despite this, the U-Boat arm scored some incredible successes in the early part of the war, raising the status of the submarine commanders and crews to that of national heroes in the eyes of the German people. The ‘Grey Wolves’ had become super-stars. Small wonder then that the U-Boat war has fascinated students of military history ever since. This book, using a carefully selected range of both wartime images and colour images of surviving U-boat memorabilia from private collections, describes 100 iconic elements of the U-Boat service and its campaigns. The array of objects include important individuals and the major U-Boat types, through to the uniforms and insignias the men wore. The weapons, equipment and technology used are explored, as are the conditions in which the U-boat crews served, from cooking facilities and general hygiene down to the crude toilet facilities. Importantly, the enemy that they faced is also covered, examining the ship-borne and airborne anti-submarine weaponry utilised against the U-boats. The U-Boats began the war, though small in number, more than a match for the Allies and created carnage amongst merchant shipping as well as sinking several major warships. The pace of technological development, however, failed to match that of Allied anti-submarine warfare weaponry and the U-Bootwaffe was ultimately doomed to defeat but not before, at one point, coming close to bringing Britain to its knees.

Hitler's U-boats and his dreaded pocket battleships such as Bismarck and Tirpitz - Churchill dubbed the latter as 'The Beast' - continue to fascinate an ever-growing interest in the Second World War. Despite a numerical disadvantage when compared the Royal Navy, Hitler's U-boats wrecked havoc in the Atlantic against vulnerable convoys and the doomed Bismarck took on the might of Britain's battleships in a mighty clash of the titans. Hitler's Naval Bases, a work of love that took the author over forty years to research and write, is the most comprehensive and dedicated book on the subject matter. A world's first, it covers bases in remarkable detail from the smallest and unmanned locations to the largest dedicated bases in Lorient, Kiel and Wilhemshaven. The book covers the different types of naval base from isolated and forgotten bases, escape and survival bases, to the extremities of the main naval bases. The functions and various departments - artillery, ship construction to dockyard medical service - are explained as are North Sea naval bases in Emden, The Weser Ports and Cuxhaven, Baltic ports, the major bases that never were ('The Lobster's Claw on Heligoland') to France, Asia and German colonies, including re-fuelling in Spain and bases located in Russia and in the 'Heart of England'. Also covered are naval artillery and naval infantry as well as the anatomy of coastal artillery batteries, the shipping yards and even rules for living in such conditions. A most lavish and phenomenal book, it is beautifully illustrated with over 200 unpublished photographs complemented with thousands of unique interviews with veterans during the war as well as survivors. A labour of love, Hitler's Naval Bases is written by a world's leading authoritarian figure and is an essential book for those interested in the armed forces of the Third Reich.

The success of German submarines during the First World War in almost cutting off Britain's vital imports had not been forgotten by Adolf Hitler and when, in March 1935, he repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, Britain, magnanimously, signed up to an Anglo-German Naval Agreement. This allowed the Germans to build their submarine strength up to one third of the British Royal Navy's tonnage. When war broke out in 1939, German U-boats went quickly into action, but with only four years of production and development, the main armament of these submarines was considerably weaker than equivalent boats in other navies and many of the other main features, such as living and the fighting conditions, were also significantly inferior. Nevertheless, the German U-boat onslaught against British merchant ships during the autumn of 1940 was highly successful because the attacks were made on the surface at night and from such close range that a single torpedo would sink a ship. Soon, though, Allied technology was able to detect U-boats at night, and new convoy techniques, combined with powerfully-armed, fast modern aircraft searching the seas, meant that by 1941 it was clear that Germany was losing the war at sea. Something had to be done. The new generation of attack U-boats that had been introduced since Hitler came to power needed urgent improvement. This is the story of the Types II, VII and IX that had already become the 'workhorse' of the Kriegsmarine's submarine fleet and continued to put out to sea to attack Allied shipping right up to the end of the war. The Type II was a small coastal boat that struggled to reach the Atlantic; the Type VII was perfectly at home there, but lacked the technology to tackle well protected convoys; whilst the Type IX was a long-range variety that was modified so that it could operate in the Indian Ocean. In this latest book by the renowned Kriegsmarine historian Jak Mallmann Showell, these attack U-boats are explored at length. This includes details of their armament, capabilities, crew facilities, and just what it was like to operate such a vessel, and of course the story of their development and operational history.

This title follows from New Vanguard 51: Kriegsmarine U-boats 1939–45 (1) and charts the continuing development of the U-boat in German service, including the evolution of the Type IX as a long range 'cruiser' intended for solo operations in distant waters. Also covered is the revolutionary Type XXI, conceived of in 1942 and launched in April 1944, the first true submarine rather than submersible, whose arrival was just too late to influence the war. Other vessels covered are the Type XXIII, a small vessel armed with only two torpedoes but technically highly advanced, and the Type X minelayers, which were rarely used in their intended role and more often used as supply boats.

Details the service records of some 1,400 officers of the German Kriegsmarine known to have commanded a U-boat between the commissioning of U-1 in June 1935, and the final surrender of U-977 to Argentina in August 1945.